for people who care about the West

Cooking up a whopper on federal land in Oregon

Here in Oregon, the dinosaurs
are stirring. The brontosaurs of big timber, almost at their last
gasp, are making one last power play, and it's a WOPR, pronounced
— how else? — "whopper," which stands for Western
Oregon Plan Revisions.

What's being revised are
management plans for six Bureau of Land Management districts in
western Oregon, which together account for 2.6 million acres of
public land.

The plan is an indigestible mess that began
to get cooked up three years ago in an out-of-court settlement
between the American Forest Resource Council — the timber
industry dinosaurs — and the Bush administration. In 1994,
the adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan protected much of the
surviving remnants of old-growth forest in the range of the
Northern spotted owl. Ever since, the timber industry has been
trying to overturn the plan and gain access to the final 10 percent
to 15 percent of the Northwest's old-growth forests that they
haven't yet logged.

In Oregon, the dinosaurs' legal
strategy centered on BLM lands in the state that are governed by a
prehistoric law called the Oregon and California Revested Railroad
Lands Act of 1937, or O&C; Act, as it's known.The American
Forest Resource Council lawsuit asserted that this law required
"sustainable" logging everywhere, and that the protection of
old-growth forests by the Northwest Forest Plan was illegal,
because it interfered with this universal logging.

The
timber industry's litigation went nowhere until 2003, when the
secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior surrendered without a
fight. They accepted an out-of-court settlement, agreeing to revise
the management plans for all Oregon BLM lands included in the
Northwest Forest Plan. They further agreed to consider at least one
alternative that opened up logging of all old-growth forests on
these railroad lands. The only off-limits areas would be small
buffers around Spotted Owl nest sites, required to obey the pesky
Endangered Species Act. Under their new interpretation of the
O&C; Act, BLM flatly stated that "lands cannot be removed from
the (timber) land base solely to protect relevant and important
features."

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that
the fate of BLM's forests in Oregon has already been decided. But
first, of course, there's a process to go through. In March, the
Bureau of Land Management completed its six-month "scoping" for
WOPR, during which several thousand public comments and one
detailed public proposal were received.

The priorities of
the public "community-conservation alternative" were to protect all
remaining mature and old-growth forest on BLM land, to shift BLM
management toward ecological restoration, and to assist
timber-dependent communities through job creation and community
stabilization projects. Such projects include forest-fuels
reduction, stream restoration, forest road maintenance and
decommissioning, and development of recreational facilities for
forest-based tourism.

Throughout the West, formerly
timber-dependent communities are pursuing projects like these as
they adapt to new opportunities. But the dinosaurs of big logging
are not interested in adapting, and, neither it seems, is the
Bureau of Land Management.

BLM has now released the
"possible action alternatives" that it will consider, and the
community-conservation alternative failed to make the list.
Instead, along with the legally required no-action alternative,
there is one that would spare some old-growth yet gut streamside
protections; and two alternatives that would abolish all old-growth
protections and log everything, one a bit more slowly than the
other. In other words, the choices range from bad to worse to
worst.

The public lands that BLM manages in Oregon are a
priceless treasure, vital to the integrity of the Northwest Forest
Plan, essential for the survival of the Northern spotted owl, and
irreplaceable for recreation activities like hiking, hunting and
fishing. Their rivers and streams are critical for endangered
stocks of salmon. Because most of these lands are low-elevation,
their forests are highly productive, and they provide essential
connections between higher-elevation national forests.

It
seems, however, that the dinosaurs of the timber industry will not
be satisfied until every last acre is slicked off. But wait: These
lands are our lands; the last old-growth forests on BLM lands
anywhere in the United States. As demonstrated by studies of
everything from hydrology to ecotourism, old-growth forests like
these are worth far more alive than dead, ecologically and
economically. One way or another, we need to make sure that this
WOPR ends up where it belongs — in the compost pile.

Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He is a biologist and writer in Ashland,
Oregon.

Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you'd like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at [email protected].